


can't you see we've got a good thing here

by punkfaery



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety Attacks, Dysfunctional Family, Haunted Houses, M/M, Murder Mystery, Recreational Drug Use, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2018-10-12 04:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10482045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkfaery/pseuds/punkfaery
Summary: Fenris is an angry ghost who won't stop haunting Hawke's new flat. Hawke isn't about to take this lying down.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *slinks into the dragon age fandom five years late* let me tell you about my passions

The disturbances start about three weeks after he moves in.

It’s not a ghost. It’s clearly not a ghost, because a) ghosts don’t exist, and b) even if they _did_ exist, no self-respecting ghost would want to live in Hawke’s flat unless it had absolutely no other choice. Even Hawke doesn’t want to live in Hawke’s flat. All right, so it’s nicely situated and the rent is astonishingly cheap, but that doesn’t make up for the cramped rooms and the persistent smell of fried fish and the yellowish stains that keep mysteriously flowering across the ceiling.

The first of it is the noises. Initially he thinks it’s a problem with the plumbing, and heads down to complain to Mr. Ling, who is nice and apologetic and thoroughly unhelpful. “We have not had anyone complain about this before,” he says to Hawke with a frown.  

As Hawke is the first listed owner of the building since it got renovated, there isn’t really much cause for argument on that front. “Well,” he says, at a bit of a loss, “I’m complaining now?”

Mr Ling turns over a piece of browned fish, and nods, slowly. “Can you describe the problem to me again?”

“It’s the pipes,” Hawke says. “They’re making noises.”

“What sort of noises?”

“Er. Pipe noises?”

Mr. Ling looks blank.

Feeling like he’s not really getting anywhere, Hawke clears his throat and does his best Pipe Noise impression. In hindsight, the impression probably goes on for a bit too long, but what it lacks in brevity it makes up for in enthusiasm and accuracy. When he’s finished, Mr. Ling is silent for a full five seconds. Then he pats Hawke very kindly on the shoulder. “I will get you some chips,” he says.

“Oh, I – I didn’t bring any money.”

“On the house,” Mr. Ling tells him, and Hawke can’t tell if the bag of crinkly-cut fries he receives five minutes later is a result of generosity or pity. Most likely it's the latter. He wonders if there’s a health and safety policy on supernatural manifestations, and decides there probably isn’t. Not that it matters, because there is no such thing as supernatural manifestations, and even if there were he doubts they could be driven out by something as simple as a strongly worded letter.

On his fourth week there, Merrill and Anders come round to help unpack some of the boxes that are still stacked in impressive and physics-defying configurations around the flat, because executive dysfunction is a bitch. “Oh my goodness. Hawke, the negative energy in here is _unreal_ ,” Merrill says, as Hawke unlocks the chain on the door.

“Or ‘hello’, as most people say.” He opens the door all the way. “Want some pizza? I’m just about to order in.”

Anders frowns at him. “Hawke, you live above a takeaway shop. Why not just get fish and chips?”

“To be quite honest, I’ve been surrounded by the smell of fish for the past – mm, let’s see – four weeks now, and it’s kind of making me want to move to the Sahara Desert just so I never have to see a fish again in my life. Even on pizza, actually, so please don’t get anything with anchovies.” He shuts the door, puts the chain back on. “So. What were you saying about negative energy?”

“That there’s lots of it,” says Merrill, sounding slightly abashed.

Hawke kicks aside a box to get to the sitting room, wincing at the resulting crunching noise from inside it. God, please let that not be the one that contains his mother’s china set. “Sounds interesting. Tell me more,” he says, as they follow him in.

He’s partly joking and partly not. Merrill sees negative energy everywhere; in old houses, in new houses, in graveyards, in shopping malls, in highway rest stops late at night. Personally, Hawke never feels anything. He has the spiritual sensitivity of a cement block. Nevertheless, it’s always entertaining to hear her theories about it all, even if he doesn’t really believe them himself. He’s always liked listening to people talk about their passions. It’s part of the reason Anders hangs out with him; even if he’s not always the greatest friend, he can always be counted on to act as a convenient earpiece.

“You can’t feel it, can you?” Merrill asks. “Oh, I suppose you can’t. Silly question. Anyway, Hawke, you ought to be careful. Something here really doesn’t like you very much.”

“Oh, sorry, that’d be me,” says Anders. “I’ll try and tone it down.”

“I’m being _serious,”_ says Merrill, sounding heated. “I felt it as soon as I walked in here. It’s oppressive. Like a big black cloud.”

“Ooh, scary.” Anders flops down in a nearby armchair, arranging himself in a lax sprawl, and grins over at Hawke. “Hear that? Your flat is being haunted by the ghost of the global air pollution crisis.”

Hawke looks up from his phone, where he’s been looking through a list of nearby (and, for the most part, eye-wateringly expensive) pizza places. “Any idea what’s causing this big black cloud? Was this flat once the base for a Satanic ritual or something? Because if that stain on the floor of the bathroom turns out to be chicken blood, I’m moving out. Ooh, look! A cheap restaurant! Fucking  _finally_." He scrolls past the meals on offer, trying very hard not to dribble on to the floor. Not that it would make much difference; this carpet is already a Class A biohazard. “Anyone want pepperoni? I’m getting pepperoni.”

“Is there something with mushrooms on?” Merrill asks.

“There can be. It’s customisable toppings.”

“Salad,” says Anders, from the armchair.

“Boring,” says Hawke.

“Can I get pineapple as well as mushrooms?” Merrill asks. “Would that be nice, do you think?”

Hawke and Anders turn on her in unison, and for the moment the subject of Hawke’s definitely-not-haunted flat is dropped.

Varric turns up about half an hour after that, apologising for the wait and carrying a six-pack of Carling's. (“Family drama,” he says by way of explanation, and everyone nods knowingly, because they’ve been friends long enough by this point to know when not to ask.) By the time the pizza arrives, they’ve already made a decent headway into the boxes. The shelves in the living room have been stocked up with books, which took longer than expected, partly due to Merrill’s insistence on arranging them all in alphabetical order and partly due to Varric’s need to stop every five minutes and criticise Hawke’s taste in literature. They leave a space at one end for Hawke’s spider plant, Stacey, who sits regally on the top shelf with her tendrils curling down to the floor, and they’re just getting started on the kitchenware when the pizza arrives. Hawke goes to get it. His legs are so cramped from kneeling that he has to walk downstairs like someone with a terrible case of haemorrhoids, and he ends up tipping the delivery boy extra just to take the alarmed expression off his face.

And about half an hour after _that,_ when they’ve almost finished their pizza (or salad, in Anders’ case) the noise starts up again. A low, creaking groan that slowly slides up the scale into a distorted wail, underscored by crackling, like a radio tuned to the wrong station. Everyone looks up. “What the hell is that?” Anders says.

“Pipes,” Hawke says, around a mouthful of pizza.

Varric shakes his head. “No, Hawke. That’s not pipes. That’s not what pipes sound like.”

“It’s what _my_ pipes sound like.”

“I’m going to go and look,” Merrill says, jumping up, and for some reason Anders and Varric both go after her. Hawke doesn’t get what all the fuss is about. Okay, so maybe his pipes kind of sound a bit like the crying of doomed spirits in hell, but that doesn’t really warrant an intervention, does it? Feeling more than a little attacked, he abandons his pizza and gets up to follow them.

The bathroom is just about big enough to fit four people, and so they stand in there, surrounded by groaning and creaking and rattling, and agree that no, the noises the pipes are making are not typical pipe noises. “Have you hidden a cat in the walls, by any chance?” Anders wants to know. “It sounds like an animal in pain. Several animals.”

“If I have, it would be a very thin cat,” says Hawke. “I would have had to put it in a taffy stretcher first. Or run it over with a lawnmower.”

“At any rate, there’s not much use in calling a plumber,” says Merrill. She has her ear to the wall, which seems a little pointless, as the noises are already loud enough to wake the dead.

“Why’s that, Daisy?”

“Well, because it’s not the plumbing,” Merrill says, as though stating the obvious. “It’s the ghost.”

There’s a chorus of groans. The plumbing joins in. Perhaps it’s agreeing with them. “Merrill,” says Hawke, as patiently as he’s able, “I do not have a ghost in my toilet.”

“Perhaps not specifically in your toilet, but you do have a ghost.” She taps the wall twice. The pipes tap back immediately. Which is, if Hawke is completely honest with himself, kind of spooky.

“Whoa. That was kind of spooky,” says Varric. “Hey, Daisy, you might be on to something here.”

Hawke groans. “Oh God, not you too.”

“Can we go back to the living room now?” Anders asks. “Much as I’m loving this foray into the unknown, I don’t want my salad to go all soggy in the middle.”

And so they finish their food accompanied by the Pipe Noise, which quietens down a little but never quite goes away. Hawke tries multiple times to drag the conversation back on to less ectoplasmic ground – their respective uni courses, Varric’s writing, Merrill’s music, Isabela’s current boyfriend (who smells weirdly of burning rubber and spends his weekends composing ambient noise-rock in an empty garage) – but somehow the conversation keeps slipping out of his grasp, like a piece of soap someone dropped in the bath. It’s dreadful. Varric asks Hawke if he ever feels _watched_ while he’s taking a shower; Merrill asks if she can bring in some of her equipment to test the electromagnetic frequency; and Anders jokingly suggests that Hawke calls in a professional exorcist, at which point Hawke’s spider plant slides off the shelf above the armchair and breaks itself on his head.

“Ow, ow, fucking _ow!”_ he shrieks, rolling out of the armchair hastily and landing on the floor in a pile of broken pottery shards and earth.

 “Stacey!” says Hawke in anguish.

“You name your plants?” Varric says. “Huh. That’s classy.”

Merrill is wringing her hands anxiously. “Are you all right? Oh, no, I told you it was angry – ”

“Merrill, _will you give it a rest with the fucking ghost?_ ”

“I’ll fetch a broom,” Hawke says diplomatically, and goes to get one.

He comes back to find Anders supine on the couch like a Victorian heroine with consumption, Varric collecting shards of ex-plant-pot, and Merrill scraping the earth together into a pile. She looks up as he walks in, eyebrows furrowed. “Hawke, be honest now. Has anything funny happened since you’ve been here? Apart from the Pipe Noise?”

“Define ‘funny’,” says Hawke, trying not to sound too evasive.

“Well – you know, just the usual sort of thing. Objects moving on their own? A feeling of malevolent energy? Static electricity? Disembodied voices?”

He shakes his head, starting to sweep the earth into the dustpan. “Nope. No voices. Although now that you mention it, I did come home last week to find someone had taken the tops off my yoghurts and poured the contents all over the kitchen floor.” Spotting her horrified expression, he adds defensively, “Hey, come on. That’s not exactly a typical sign of spiritual activity, right?”

Varric snorts. “A ghost with a grudge against Muller Crunch Corner? That’s a new one.”

“Oh my goodness! You’ve got a _poltergeist_!” Merrill sounds somewhere between appalled and delighted. “And you didn’t even tell me? What else has happened?”

“Er. The doors sort of…shut themselves a lot? Usually at night? Oh, and someone took all the rings off my shower curtain. That was a bit weird, not sure why anyone would want to do that, but there you go.”

“Maybe the ghost wanted to see you naked,” Varric says.

“Can someone bring me some frozen peas?” asks Anders, plaintively. “My head really hurts.”

“Get it yourself,” says Hawke. “We’re discussing my poltergeist.”

Anders directs a baleful squint at him. “I don’t care about your poltergeist. Your poltergeist is a dick.”

There’s a slam from a few rooms away, so loud that it makes the walls rattle slightly. Everyone looks at each other. “Was that the bedroom door?” Anders asks, in a tone of forced casualness, and Hawke nods silently.

“Get your keys,” says Merrill. “I think this is something we should probably talk about elsewhere.”

For once, Hawke is inclined to agree, and so they grab their coats from the back of the sofa and beat a calm and strategic retreat. They definitely aren’t running away. Absolutely not.

 “Hawke? Hawke, did you get my frozen peas?” Anders says urgently as they clatter down the stairs.

“Funnily enough, it wasn’t at the top of my list of priorities,” Hawke pants, fumbling with the lock. "Now listen - there's a nice cafe on the street corner and it's warm and they do croissants and no one there is trying to kill us. Come on, let's go. Move!"

Above them, the whining pipes give out one last defiant sputter, and fall silent.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few things, since my last note was less than informative:  
> 1) the title is a quote from "ghost story" by charming disaster, which you might have heard as the weather on welcome to night vale that one time. it's a great song; i recommend it, if you're into duets and softcore necrophilia  
> 2) aveline will eventually feature in this story, assuming i continue it and don't get distracted by other fandoms or obligations, which is what usually happens. (really, someone should buy me a pair of blinkers.) i have a nebulous sort of a plan, but jury's out on whether the finished product will resemble the plan in any way, shape or form. we shall see.  
> 3) feedback sustains me. i read every comment and inscribe them all on the stone tablet of my soul  
> 4) happy reading!

They reconvene at the café.

Merrill tries to phone Isabela a couple of times, but it goes straight through to voicemail. “She’s probably at her dance class,” she explains to Hawke. “Oh, she’ll be so excited! Are you going to tell Bethany?”

“Bethany had nightmares for weeks after _The Conjuring_ came on telly last Halloween. Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

Merrill looks downcast. “No, I suppose not.” Then she spots the cake rack and brightens up again. “Can you get me a chocolate whirl? I think I left my purse in your flat.”

Out in the open, sitting in a warm café surrounded by chatter and the smell of cinnamon, otherworldly visitations seem like a thing of the past. By the time his coffee arrives, with a wispy foam leaf piped on top courtesy of the junior barista, Hawke is beginning to feel that they might, perhaps, have overreacted just a tiny bit. After all, things fall off shelves all the time, and plumbing problems are hardly uncommon. There’s no need to go and rearrange the laws of physics just to explain a few weird noises, is there?

He voices this opinion through a mouthful of cake, and gets shut down mercilessly before he’s even reached the end of his sentence.

“Are you thick in the head?” Merrill says to him severely. She has crumbs all round her mouth, which makes it hard to take her seriously, but he knows that voice when he hears it and doesn’t try to interrupt. “Five minutes ago you were about ready to up sticks and move to Canada. You were terrified!”

“All right, yes, I know, but – ”

“I hate to agree, Hawke, but I think she’s right.” Anders puts his elbows on the table and rubs the lump on the back of his head, wincing. “Something’s got to be done.”

“I’m not moving out,” Hawke says. “No way. I’ve only just moved _in._ Do you know what the housing prices are like in this area? Astronomical isn’t a strong enough word.”

Merrill shakes her head. “No, no, of course you’re not moving out, that would be silly! No, we’ve got to try and communicate with him somehow.”

“Him?” says Varric. “Who says it’s a him? Could be a her.”

“Or a them,” Anders adds. “Don’t misgender the spirit. You might make it angry. Well, angri _er_.”

“No, it’s definitely a him. It just _felt_ male,” Merrill says resolutely. “I’m quite good at telling the difference, you know. Do you mind if we go back to my room for a bit? I need to collect my things.”

“Sure,” says Hawke. “What things?”

* * *

As it turns out, Merrill’s “things” consist of an EMF detector, a transistor radio that looks like she might have stolen it from a historical re-enactment society, a microphone, and a battered Ouija board. “Why do you even _have_ all this stuff?” Hawke asks her, not sure whether to be weirded out or impressed.

“It’s a hobby,” says Merrill. “And I use the microphone for my music sometimes.”

Well, fair enough.

It’s – strange, being back on the university campus again after nearly a year. It looks exactly the same as before, save for a few fresh pieces of graffiti, and Hawke feels the usual funny hollowness in his stomach at the thought that he’ll never really be a part of it again – not properly, not like he used to be. But what’s done is done, and he pushes the feeling to the back of his mind, like a man politely ushering unwanted guests out of the house. Merrill has finally managed to get through to Isabela, and is filling her in on the basics (which pretty much amount to “Hawke has a poltergeist in his flat that may or may not be trying to murder him”). From the sounds of things, she’s even more enthusiastic about the whole idea than Merrill. “Pick me up outside the practise room in fifteen minutes,” she instructs them. “It’s on the edge of campus, next to the library. Hawke, this is _brilliant!_ I’ve never met a real live ghost before!”

Hawke decides not to point out that “live” is not really the most accurate description, and helps Merrill pack her equipment into a duffel bag that’s almost as battered as the Ouija board. Isabela is waiting for them, as promised; she’s still dressed in her dance clothes, which consist of a pink spaghetti-strap top, boy shorts, and not much else. She looks fantastic. Also quite cold. 

“I see you’ve forgotten your trousers again,” Anders says to her as they get on to the bus.

Isabela displays her excellent physical coordination by shoving a handful of coins under the driver’s window with one hand and punching him in the shoulder with the other. “I see _you’re_ still trying to pull off the six o’clock shadow,” she says. “Give it up. You look like a homeless person. So – let’s hear about this ghost! Can you actually see it? I mean, does it have a – you know, a physical form?”

“Don’t fuck the ghost,” says everybody, wearily.

The bus lurches into life, drowning out her noises of protest. Hawke takes a seat, balancing the bag on his lap, and silently resents the fact that everyone seems to be treating this whole situation as some sort of great adventure. After all, they’re not the ones who have to _live_ in this bloody haunted flat. _They_ don’t have to put up with their shower rings being stolen, and their yoghurt being vandalised, and their pot plants being murdered, and –

“Can I borrow your coat?” Isabela says to Hawke. “It’s freezing.”

He gives it to her, only slightly miffed that it looks significantly better on her than it does on him, and settles back into his seat.

The ride back to the flat takes a little over half an hour, but it feels about six times that length. Hawke finds himself jiggling his leg up and down every so often just to get rid of the nervous cramps going up and down it. Evening is coming on fast; the lights of the passing houses blur past, filled with happy people watching television and sitting down to dinner in their nice, unhaunted kitchens. He envies them. God, how he envies them.

“Well, folks, this is it,” Varric says, reaching out to press the “Stop” button. “Everyone ready?”

“What would you do if I said no?” Hawke asks. Merrill grabs him by the shoulder of his shirt and drags him off the bus.

Above the cheerful blue and red lights of _Fish Tale,_ the windows of the flat look like pitch-black holes. Squinting up at them, Hawke is sure that he sees something shift far back in the gloom, there for the blink of an eye and then gone again. He shivers, trying to tell himself that it’s because Isabela has stolen his coat, and waves miserably at Mr. Ling through the window before retrieving his keys and opening the front door.

Inside, it’s quiet, and empty, and very dark. Realistically, he knows it can’t be colder than the street outside, but his skin is prickling all the same. “Get the lights,” Isabela orders him. “I can’t see shit.”

Obediently, Hawke edges upstairs, muscles tensed in preparation. Thankfully, nothing comes flying down the stairs at him, and he finds the light switch and clicks it on, flooding the stairwell with a sickly sodium-yellow light. 

“Much better,” Isabela says. “Hey, where’s the pup?”

“Hero? He’s at Gamlen’s. Bethany’s taking him to doggy training classes. Just as well, really – the dog’s always the first one to go in horror movies.” He heads up the stairs towards the hallway. Everything looks ominously normal, which is an oxymoron if ever he’s heard one. The door to the living room hangs open, revealing a chaos of open boxes and empty pizza cartons.

“You’re not in a horror movie.” Merrill comes up the stairs behind him, bag clanking on her shoulder. “You just happen to have a house-guest, who is, for whatever reason, a bit displeased with you. We’re going to find out what he wants, and then we’re going to help him.”

“Help _him?”_ Hawke is aghast. “What about me? I’m the one who needs help!”

“Well, I’m sure he doesn’t _want_ to be stuck here,” says Merrill reasonably. “After all, it’s not a particularly nice – ”

“Merrill, sweetheart, do you need any help setting up your equipment?” Isabela interjects smoothly, steering her into the living room with one hand on her shoulder. Hawke shoots her a thankful look and follows suit, scooping up pizza boxes as he goes and depositing them in the corner so they’re out of the way. He doesn’t really have a table – the kitchenette is too small to fit one, and the coffee table is too low to eat off comfortably, so he usually just eats dinner on the sofa, or sometimes in bed if he’s feeling particularly disgusting. He slides both hands under the base of the table and shuffles it over to the wall, creating a clear space in the middle of the floor.

“What’s it to be?” he says. “Ouija board, salt circle, or Latin chanting?”

“I was thinking we’d start with the board,” Merrill says, brightly. “And I’ve got my little thingy here, of course, to see whether we’re alone or not.” She waves the EMF detector at him. “Have you got any candles?”

Isabela quickly locates some in a kitchen drawer, and soon enough all five of them are seated on the floor, surrounded by tiny vanilla-scented flames that burn steadily in the gathering dark. Merrill finds the board and planchette, places them in the centre so that everyone can see. “Now, you probably all know how this works,” she starts.

“I don’t,” says Anders. “I’m clueless. Give me a run-through?”

Merrill arranges herself more comfortably, and points. “It’s pretty simple, see? We all put our fingers on the planchette, really lightly, and wait for it to move. If the ghost wants to say something, he’ll move it to one letter, and then the next letter, until it spells out a word. This circle is for ‘yes’, and this one is for ‘no’. When we finish the session, we have to say goodbye, otherwise the door doesn’t get closed properly – ”

“What door?” Anders says, looking bewildered.

“The door between this world and the next, of course,” Merrill says. “The spirit gateway.”

Varric casts a significant look at the dustpan in the corner, still containing the broken remains of Stacey the spider plant. “Given what happened today, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this particular spirit doesn’t give two shits about gateways.”

“Even so, it’s polite. Hands on the planchette, please?” They all lean forward and rest a finger lightly on the small circle of metal. Merrill clears her throat. “Messere ghost? Are you there?”

Aside from the distant rumble of cars passing on the main road, it’s silent. Even the pipes are quiet, which is unusual – they’re normally making at least some kind of noise, whether it’s quiet gurgling or hideous, unearthly wailing.

“Hey. Turn your thingy on,” Isabela says, and jabs a thumb towards the EMF detector, which sits innocently on the floor next to Merrill, blinking at them with its single red eye.

“Oh – oh, yes, of course!” She fiddles with the knobs. The machine makes a quiet whirring sound, and the screen flickers into life, displaying a mystifying configuration of wavy lines and numbers. “Nothing unusual just yet,” she says, squinting at it. “It should start making a little noise if the reading gets above a thousands volts per metre.” She puts her finger back on the planchette. “Let’s try again. Hello? Is anyone there? It’s me, Merrill.”

“And I’m Hawke,” says Hawke. “I live here.”

“Don’t say that,” Merrill tells him. “You might upset him.”

“Oh, are we not allowed to say the word _live_ now? Is it a touchy subject? Just my luck to get a poltergeist with no sense of - "

The planchette moves.

Not much, but it moves, scraping sideways along the board and taking their forefingers with it. “Whoa,” says Isabela, sounding hushed.

“Are you doing that?” Anders says to Hawke. Hawke shakes his head. He’s beginning, he realises suddenly, to feel a little ill. Part of him feels that if he really did have a ghost in his flat, he’d sort of prefer not to know about it; after all, there’s a fairly substantial difference between having a set of pipes that occasionally made unsettling noises and actually knowing for sure that someone else is living in your house with you. Well – not _living,_ exactly, but _existing,_ watching you, being around you, unseen but still horribly, irrefutably present.

The planchette is still. “I’ll ask again,” Merrill says. “Is anybody there?”

A brief pause – then the planchette moves again, towards the left side of the board. It goes in jerky, uncertain movements, as if the person shifting it isn’t quite used to being able to move things around at will. It reaches its destination, and stops again.

They all stare at it.

“’NO’?” Anders says, incredulously. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Isabela starts cackling with laughter.

“It’s not funny!” Hawke says in desperation. “This proves it! Something’s here with us, right now, in this room – ”

“Yeah, and it has a _terrible_ sense of humour,” Varric says.

Merrill, clearly trying to get things back on track, sits back on her heels, addressing the room in general. The pipes are starting to whine again, although it’s quieter than usual, almost subdued. “Excuse me? I know you must be a bit angry, but I’d just like to talk, if that’s all right. Please could you move this to the letters, so you can you tell us why you’re here?”

A book slides from the shelf above her and hits the floor, pages fluttering. Hawke darts a glance over at it. _One Hundred and One Uses for a Phallic Tuber._ Well, he can probably let that one go. The planchette is moving again, randomly now, weaving from one side of the board to the other without stopping to linger on anything. Beside Merrill, the EMF detector is emitting a series of short, urgent little beeps.

“It’s at seven hundred,” Merrill says, staring at it in awe. “That’s higher than any reading I’ve ever got before – Hawke, do you think – ”

“Look out!” Anders yells, and launches himself sideways to press her down to the carpet.

He’s just in time. A heavy book, one of his mother’s by the look of it, shoots sideways off the bookcase and misses Merrill’s head by a fraction, thumping off the opposite wall.

“Right,” says Anders, a little more high-pitched than usual, “we’re stopping this _now,_ come on – ”

He reaches for the board, and as if in response, the candles go out. Not one by one, as if snuffed out by an invisible hand, but all at once, flames guttering and then going, leaving nothing but a trailing stream of smoke and a faint smell of burning. Varric swears. Isabela is on her feet already, feeling for the light switch; Hawke can see the shape of her illuminated against the dim orange light of the streetlamp, filtering in through the blinds. “It’s on your left!” he shouts at her.

She fumbles for a moment more, than finds the switch and clicks it.

After that, everything seems to happen at once. The overhead light goes on; the rapid beeping from Merrill’s device crescendos until it’s almost a shriek; the planchette flies off the board and hits Anders in the face; and the bulb blows in a flare of blinding light, spraying glass across the room. Varric and Merrill are cowering back against the sofa, hands over their heads.

And then it stops.

Silence. Hawke can feel glass in his hair, prickling his scalp. The EMF detector gives out one last, sullen beep, then dies, its red light flickering away to nothing. Even the Pipe Noise is gone, now; the only sound in the whole flat is their shallow, rapid breathing, and the cars passing by outside, seemingly uncaring that five individuals have just experienced a close encounter of the fourth kind in a perfectly ordinary North Greenwich flat. 

“What,” says Hawke, finding his voice at last. “The _hell._ Was that.”

No one answers him. Isabela sinks back down beside Anders like a puppet that’s had its strings cut; Merrill is checking her EMF detector, pale-faced. From her expression, Hawke gathers that whatever the device was doing before his “houseguest” decided to pitch a fit, it’s definitely not doing it any more. For no real reason, Hawke finds himself wishing he had a canary. They used to send canaries down coal mines to test for danger, didn’t they? Or was it for gas? They’d learned about it in history class, he’s certain. Suddenly, he finds himself yearning for the safe, dusty torpor of his high school history lessons, where the worst thing that could happen was the substitute teacher throwing pencils at you if he thought you weren’t concentrating properly.

“Ah. That was…certainly something,” says Varric with enviable calmness, after their breathing has returned to an approximation of normal. “Everybody doing okay?”

“Physically, yes,” Anders says. “Emotionally? I've been better.”

Merrill gives her broken detector a final, lingering look, then sighs, sitting back on her heels. “Well, I don’t know what set him off, but he seems to be gone now. Or at least dormant. Hawke, do you have somewhere to stay? It might not be a terribly good idea to sleep here tonight.”

Hawke refrains from telling her that if he had to choose between sleeping in this flat tonight and sleeping in a bathtub filled with angry scorpions, he would choose the latter without so much as hesitating. He shakes his head.

“You can crash at mine for a few days, Hawke.” Varric’s on his feet again, reaching for the dustpan. “It’s not much, but I’ve got a sleeping bag if you need one. Just to warn you, though, classes start at eight, so it’ll be an early start.”

“Early start’s better than an early death,” Hawke says, archly. His heart is beginning to slow, but there’s still a crawling sensation under his skin, like something’s got under there and won’t leave. He’s also becoming aware of a more pressing problem, one which gives new life to the term _pants-wetting terror._ He stands up. “All right, everyone. Nature calls. If I’m not back in five minutes, bring a spatula to scrape me off the bathroom tiles.”

“Duly noted,” Varric says. “Come on, Blondie, help me clear up some of this mess.”

In the bathroom, Hawke bends down to the sink and splashes water on his face, letting it drip down to his collar. Absently, he paints small shapes on to his forehead – stars, circles, tiny whorls. His normally hyperverbal inner monologue is playing and replaying one thought, like a record needle caught on a scratch. A ghost. An actual honest-to-God heavens-to-Betsy Turn-of-the-Screw-style ghost. At what point did his life somehow turn into a film from the 99p horror rentals section? And why now? Why _him?_ Weren’t things already difficult enough without the addition of fucking Danny Phantom?

There’s a faint scraping sound outside, like something heavy being dragged across the floor. “It’s only been two minutes, guys,” he yells through the door. “You don’t have to bring the spatula just yet.”

No answer. With a faint sinking feeling, he straightens up and stares at the door. It stares back, coldly.

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost,” he says to himself, in his best Ray Parker Jr. impression, which still isn’t particularly good, and is also not true. Wiping his hands absently on the towel, he screws up what remains of his courage and reaches for the handle, turning it.

There’s nothing there. Of course there’s nothing there. The hallway is empty, brightly lit, and from the left-hand door he can hear the sounds of the others cleaning up the disaster of broken glass and ripped books. Withholding a snort at his own paranoia, Hawke turns back to the bathroom to close the door.

And very nearly screams.

 _Would_ have screamed, probably, if not for the fact that his vocal cords seem to have temporarily gone on holiday. Instead, he just makes a faint, strangled gagging noise and stares, mutely, while his brain screams at him to run and his heart goes into what feels like instantaneous cardiac arrest and his legs do absolutely fucking nothing. If this really was a horror film, he’d probably have died about six times by this point. It’s humiliating.

There’s a man in his bathroom. He looks – well – _normal_ , insofar as an apparition from the far side of the veil can look normal. No rotting flesh, no black pits for eyes. Skin the colour of strong tea, and a shock of white hair, the same bright white as the scars (tattoos?) that run in weird, spiralling lines up his throat and chin. Most of all, he looks _young._ Younger than Hawke, even, although it’s hard to tell through the haze of blind terror that’s making everything go a little bit wobbly at the edges.

The two of them stare at one another, unmoving and unblinking, for what feels like about six years. Then Isabela’s voice rings out from down the hall, shattering the stillness as effectively as a starting pistol. “Hawke! Hawke, are you still in there? If you’re not dead yet, I need to know where you keep your old newspapers!”

He only glances away for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough. When he looks back, the bathroom is empty again. Hawke lets out a slow, shaky breath, and as he does, the light over the sink flickers. Just once. Just faintly. But he can feel that whatever it is – _whoever_ it is – hasn’t gone away, not yet. They’re still there. Waiting. 

“Mother fuck of a _shit,”_ he says hoarsely, and begins to make his way back to the living room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some more notes:
> 
> 1) this will be covered in later chapters, but in case anyone's confused: fenris, as i've depicted him in this story, is a kind of tulpa - which is to say that he's a being strengthened through the force of human belief. i'm taking a few liberties with the concept, as the original notion of a "tulpa" describes it as a kind of imaginary friend that gradually gains sentience and autonomy through the force of its creator's mental power. fenris is very much a real person, independent of hawke and co., but their belief in his existence allows him to grow more corporeal, and exact a greater influence over the physical world. hope that's clear(ish)
> 
> 2) fucked-up family dynamics are my JAM
> 
> 3) i have never actually played da2 with sebastian as a companion, but from the clips i have seen of him, he seems annoying, and his eyes creep me out. i apologise if there are any sebastian fans out there; i am clueless and perfectly willing to rescind this opinion in the face of opposing evidence
> 
> hope you enjoy chapter, thank you for reading!

“You saw it? You actually _saw it?”_

“Yes, Anders, _I saw it,_ how many times do I have to tell you? Fucking hell.”

Anders rubs his temples with an aggrieved expression. “All right, all right. Just making sure.”

It’s Sunday morning, and the uni piazza is almost empty, save for the four of them (minus Merrill, who’s off at band practise) and a cluster of third-year students with piercings around their mouths, passing round a joint. The second-hand smoke coming off them is heady, and Hawke blames it entirely for what comes out of his mouth next, which is, “Actually, he was kind of hot.”

Everyone looks at him. It's hideous.

" _What?_ Come on, I was expecting some sort of horrible demon with, oh, I don’t know, gory eye sockets and a mouth full of fangs or something, of course an ordinary person is going to look hot in comparison! I’m not saying I’d _proposition_ him or anything, I just – ”

“You’re turning into me,” Isabela says, sounding aghast. “Oh, I don’t like it. Can you go back to normal, non-thirsty Hawke? Please?”

Hawke sighs, capitulating. “Look. I’m just telling you what I saw, all right? He was about my age. Maybe younger. Loads of white hair, weird scars on his neck, a bit transparent at the edges. That was it.”

“And what did he do?” Varric asks. “Did he ooze blood? Throw stuff around? Rattle any chains at you? What was his shtick?”

“Uh. He just sort of…stood there, really? Although I think he may have seen me peeing,” Hawke adds. “That’s not a good thing, honestly.”

Isabela laces her hands together under her chin and stares intently at him over them. “So what are you are going to do? I mean, you can’t go back there.”

“I don’t really have many other options,” Hawke says, shifting uncomfortably. On the whole, his friends are pretty good when it comes to not mentioning his situation, but sometimes there’s no other option – and at those times, it’s hard to avoid the fact that there are certain differences between him and them that can never really be reconciled. Apart from Varric, who knows a little of what it’s like to be suddenly thrust into the position of family provider, they’ve all got people they can rely on if anything goes too badly wrong. Merrill has her extended family; Isabela, her mother; Anders, his foster parents. None of them are perfect, but at least they _exist._ He supposes Gamlen would count, if it weren’t for the fact that he tends to treat Hawke like something sticky and disgusting stuck to the sole of his shoe.

Isabela is looking at him. The expression on her face is unfamiliar. It takes him a while to work out exactly what it is, but eventually he realises, to his dismay, that it's sympathy. “Well,” he says, eager to deflect the conversation, “I’m seeing Bethany this afternoon, so I can probably string that out until late, and then I’ve got work at eight tomorrow, so I’ve only got to spend – what, eight hours max? – at home. Eight hours isn’t that much, right? What can happen in eight hours?”

“The Titanic sunk in three,” Anders says.

Varric smacks him on the shoulder, and says with calculated breeziness, “Of course, you’re welcome to stay at mine as long as you need to.”

Hawke does know. He stares over at the students, watching them without really seeing them. One of them stubs out the joint, but it doesn't go out all the way, and the smoke curls luxuriantly up into the air, making interesting shapes as it goes. It smells green and alive. 

“Nah, he’ll be all right,” Isabela says. “Won’t you, Hawke?”

The fact is this: living off yourself, as Hawke does, as he’s _used_ to doing, it gets pretty hard to accept offers of help as anything other than charity. He knows, on a purely intellectual level, that Varric isn’t offering him a place to stay because he feels sorry for him. That doesn’t mean that he feels any better about it.

Varric breaks the silence, which is one of the things he's best at. “You know, Hawke, she’s right. It might not be so bad.”

Hawke stares at him. So does everyone else. “And your reasoning behind that is...?”

“You said you saw him?”

“I did say that, yes.” 

“Well, think about it,” Varric says. “He was alone with you in an empty room for however long it took you to piss, right? We know he can move shit around. We know he can cause damage. So if he wanted you killed or otherwise maimed, that would have been a pretty good opportunity. Right?”

Hawke nods, slowly. “So you’re saying he might not be malevolent?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go _that_ far,” Varric says. “At the very least, he’s kind of a jackass. But possibly not a murderous one.”

“Hey, let’s not forget that he dropped a plant on Anders.” Isabela gives him a sly sideways grin. “Maybe he just likes you. Maybe he thinks you’re too pretty to die young.”

On that encouraging note, they leave for lunch, which consists of a selection of limp rolls and cafeteria-sanctioned coffee that tastes like artificially sweetened mud. Hawke doesn’t speak to Isabela for the entire meal, because _honestly._

* * *

When Hawke knocks at the door he’s immediately greeted by a volley of excited barks, punctuated by intermittent thumps and what sounds like distant swearing. He waits patiently, shuffling his feet on the mat. Approximately four minutes later Gamlen opens up, restraining Hero with a firm double-handed grip on his lead and looking more than a bit harassed.

“We weren’t expecting you for another hour,” he says by way of greeting. He lets go of the lead; Hero immediately launches himself at Hawke and tries to put both paws on his shoulders, breathing loudly and enthusiastically into his face.

“Got lucky with the trains,” Hawke says, angling his head backwards to avoid getting canine saliva all over it. “Where’s Thing One and Thing Two?”

“Carver’s out staying with friends, Bethy’s upstairs doing God knows what. Knock if you like, but she won’t hear you. Just sits up there with those daft headphones over her ears all day. Be a miracle if she passes her exams, the way she’s going.”

Hawke is halfway up the stairs, no longer listening. Bethany’s door is shut, but he can hear the faint beat of music from inside, and when he knocks it goes on without interruption. “See?” says Gamlen from close behind him. “Dead to the world.”

Hawke ignores him, and waits. After a few seconds of no response, he turns the handle and tentatively opens the door.

As Gamlen predicted, Bethany’s slouched at the desk, plugged into her music centre – and when he taps her on the shoulder she turns round and shrieks, “Garrett!” before imprisoning him in something that’s not so much a hug as it is a sort of vertical wrestling match. Hawke pats her on the back, weakly. Hero, having followed them upstairs, joins the embrace with delight, whacking his tail painfully against Hawke’s legs.

“Let the lad go, for Christ’s sake,” Gamlen says, “you only saw him a week ago. What is this, the bloody Railway Children?”

Hawke ignores him and pushes Bethany to arms’ length, noting the appearance of a new fringe (roughly cut, uneven, he suspects she did it herself) and a flannel shirt that she’s obviously borrowed from Carver, going by the size. “Bethy,” he says, “I love you, but if I ever see you hold a pair of scissors near your hair again, you’re no longer a part of this family.”

“Well, _I_ think it looks good on me,” Bethany says. “Anyway, you’re one to talk. Are you ever going to get rid of that stupid ponytail?”

Cornered, Hawke says, “This is my look.”

She slides the headphones down to her neck, and gives him a dubious look. “Really?”

“Yes! And besides, ponytails are cool. They've very _now.”_

Bethany shrugs. “So are fringes. Oh – I made cake, by the way. It’s in the kitchen if you want to try some. The icing went a bit wrong but I promise it tastes all right.”

“I’m sure it tastes great,” Hawke says, unconvincingly.

Gamlen raps on the door, sharply. It’s pretty unnecessary, considering that they can see him standing right there, and Hawke takes some petty satisfaction in waiting as long as he dares before turning around. “Yeah?”

Gamlen doesn’t look impressed. “Come down to the kitchen. There’s some things we need to discuss.”

“Oh. Right. Of course,” Hawke says, and trails down after him, ignoring the slight sinking feeling in his stomach.

The kitchen initially looks to be in a decent condition, but when Hawke glances over at the side he can’t keep back a wince. The sink is buried underneath a precarious heap of plates and kitchenware, which look as though they’ve been accumulating there for several months at least, even though his last visit was only a week ago. Well, no one ever said that being the eldest sibling was a glamorous profession. The longer he prevaricates, Hawke thinks, the worse it will be, so rolls up his sleeves and plunges his hands directly into the brownish water, trying not to think about what kind of mutated, deformed cell structures might be hanging around in there.  

“Sorry,” Gamlen says from behind him, managing to somehow sound belligerent and contrite at the same time. “It’s been a bit manic around here. Haven’t had time to do much cleaning.”

“Oh, it’s all right. You should see my flat. Or – well, you shouldn’t, really.” _Especially not now that it’s being terrorised by the world’s most pissed-off ghoul._ Hawke wonders what would happen if he did take Gamlen back to the flat. He imagines locking Gamlen in the living room and letting the spirit have its fun, and then coming back an hour later to find his uncle a shivering, white-faced wreck huddled in the corner, and finds the image perversely rewarding. He reaches in again; his left hand encounters something solid and (oh God, oh _God_ ) slimy. He recoils, spattering water over the counter.

“The school fees are due in a month,” says Gamlen, very quietly.

Hawke goes still for a minute, hands hanging uselessly in the soapy water. The school fees. Of course – he’d known there was something, it had been there in the back of his head for weeks, like a low hum lurking just below the field of his hearing. He hadn’t known it was quite this soon, though. Or that he’d be the one covering it all. He hauls another armful of wet dishes on to the sideboard with a clatter. “I know. Look, I’ve nearly got enough, I can transfer it to you in a couple of weeks, maybe less if I get my raise – ”

 “That’s not good enough.”

Hawke swallows the instinctive response that bubbles up, and just nods. Gamlen is right, he thinks. It’s the best he can do, but that doesn’t make it good enough, and humiliation gathers itself hot and tight inside his throat.

“There’s enough for groceries, but not much else,” Gamlen says. “Carver needs a new blazer – the old one’s worn to shit – and God knows how we’re going to afford the mortgage when _that_ comes around – ”

“What are you talking about?” Bethany asks, appearing suddenly in the doorway like the living personification of _deus ex machina._

She wanders over to them. Hawke is impressed to see that she doesn’t flinch at the sight of the sink; clearly she’s used to it, or else has a stronger stomach than he’s given her credit for. “Nothing that’d interest you,” he says, and gives her a brief, one-armed hug. “And seeing as you’re here, you can do the drying up. Get to it.”

Bethany doesn’t complain, which is one of the reasons why she’s his favourite sibling. Just thinking that causes a nasty flutter of guilt in his stomach. He’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to have favourite siblings, that it’s some kind of flouting of holy familial law, and in fairness he does love Carver just as much as he loves Bethany, in a way that’s fierce and instinctive and altogether hard to describe. He just doesn’t always _like_ him quite as much. 

Hawke opens the cupboard, and is appalled (though unsurprised) to find that it’s empty except for a dog dish and a plastic measuring jug. “Jesus Christ. What have you been using for meals? How are we going to eat dinner? I’m not eating out of the dog dish, so no one bother suggesting it.”

“That’s really none of your business,” says Gamlen coolly, “and anyway, you can’t stay for dinner tonight.”

There’s a pause while Hawke tries to fight down the slight fluttering in his chest. “That’s. Er. Fine, obviously,” he says. Because it is, it’s totally fine. Why wouldn’t it be fine? Then he asks, “Why, exactly?”

Bethany smiles beatifically. “Gamlen’s taking us out!”

“No, Gamlen is not taking you out,” says Gamlen. “He – I mean, I – have a work dinner. You’re just a plus one.”

 _He’s totally taking us out,_ Bethany mouths at him, as Gamlen turns away to close the cupboard.

“Work dinner?” says Hawke. “What kind of work dinner?” He’s fighting to keep his voice casual. The phrase “work dinner” implies that Gamlen has actually _found work,_ which is a miracle Jesus Christ himself would have been hard-pressed to pull off. Hawke knows full well that he shouldn’t get his hopes up; it’s unlikely to be the kind of work that solves the problems they’ve been grappling with for the past year, but still, it’s a start.

“Just an interview,” says Gamlen. His voice has the same kind of strained casualness as Hawke’s. Their eyes meet for just a moment, and there’s a moment of mutual understanding there: _don’t fuck this up_. _Don’t ruin the interview. Don’t lose the job, if you get it. Don’t let Carver or Bethany know how bad things have got_. It’s one of the few things they agree on; Gamlen doesn’t want either Bethany or Carver to know just how much of Leandra’s money he’s frittered away, and neither does Hawke, although for a very different reason. Carver’s already got enough resentment with regards to the Swiss Family Hawke – more than enough, really – and would probably respond to the news with characteristic levels of violence, and Bethany would be nice about it, which was infinitely worse.

“Good luck,” says Hawke, and for once, he completely means it.

The trains on the way back are nightmarish; he waits on the platform for almost an hour, water dripping from the roof on to the tracks in a steady metronome, and then misses his connection and ends up stuck in a small station cafe for half an hour, trying to make his Americano last as he waits for the next train to arrive. When he finally arrives back at the shop it’s closed, windows shuttered and dark. Hawke fumbles for his keys and lets himself in.

It’s silent. Even on its quieter days the flat is never this silent. Hawke makes his way up the stairs, soft-footed, doing his best to temper the rising tide of unease. The lights are off, which doesn’t help matters, so he moves into the living room and finds the switch, silently praising Isabela for remembering to replace the bulb.

The light goes on.

Hawke’s first, irrational thought is that his flat has been broken into, because there’s someone sitting on his armchair with their back to him and he _knows_ he locked the front door and no one else lives here apart from – Oh. _Oh._

The figure shifts, then turns around, and Hawke feels all the strength go out of his legs, leaving them feeling boneless and numb. He gropes for the wall in an attempt to hold himself up.

“You’re in my house,” the ghost says to him.

“Grgh,” Hawke replies, graciously.

“Why are you in my house?”

“Argh,” says Hawke.

The ghost stands, turning to face him fully, and the part of Hawke’s brain that isn’t currently screaming in mindless terror notes that he’s shorter than he expected. Shorter than Hawke, definitely, although Hawke is a little over six foot four and the world is thus full of things that are shorter than he is. He recovers himself and manages to blurt out, “I’m sorry!”

The ghost pauses, looking a little nonplussed. “You’re _sorry?”_

 “I – I didn’t know anyone else was – ” Living here? No. Bad choice of words. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, helplessly. “Um. I only just moved in. I did pay for it,” he adds, although he’s pretty sure that late rent isn’t the primary issue here. 

“I was here first,” the ghost says, and it might be Hawke’s imagination, but he’s sure that the raised white patterns on his throat flicker slightly, like lines of static on an old television. Hawke considers saying, Have you thought about maybe going somewhere else? and decides not to. He may not have much in the way of common sense, but he doesn’t have a deathwish.

“We could cohabit?” he offers instead, a bit lamely.

The ghost makes a slight growling noise. Hawke jumps. “All right, all right. Listen, I’m sure we can sort this out – ” _Sort this out? It’s not a fucking double-booked hotel room, you absolute idiot,_ “– but until then, could you maybe...stop with the noises?”

The ghost stares at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The noises. In the pipes. And the throwing things. And the...well, all of it, really.”

“If you don’t like it, you can leave,” says the ghost.

He doesn’t sound like he’s about to help Hawke join the legion of the undead any time soon. In fact, he seems remarkably calm, which is surprising considering that twenty-four hours ago he singlehandedly wrecked the living room and almost killed Anders with a flowerpot. Hawke realises, to his own mild horror, that he’s starting to relax. “Well, that’s the thing,” he says, faltering. “I can’t actually leave.”

“Why not?”

Hawke edges away from the wall. His legs are beginning to feel more like legs and less like overcooked noodles, although his heart is still hammering quite a bit faster than seems healthy. What did his mother do when she had guests round and wanted to make a good impression? Sit them down? Ask them how they were? Offer them drinks? Well, the first two seem a little redundant, but: “Do you drink tea?” he asks.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” says the ghost, frostily, “I’m _dead.”_

Hawke waits a moment, in case there’s further clarification. There isn’t. “Is that a no?”

 _“Yes,_ it’s a – are you going to answer my question?”

“Yes. Yes, well, about that.” He edges further into the room and sinks down on to the sofa. Much better. Now that he’s no longer in imminent danger of collapse, he’s starting to feel a little braver, and this time when he looks up he can actually make eye contact. The ghost's eyes are fixed unblinkingly on him. It's like staring into the camera during an eye test, except an eye test doesn't usually carry imminent risk of death. Not unless the optician is really, really incompetent.

“I can’t leave because I can’t afford to.” The statement is bald. There’s no need to get into the personal shit, the nitty-gritty stuff about _family_ and _debt_ and all the rest of it; what’s needed here is hard facts. He coughs slightly. “This is the only place I could find where I can cover rent. I know you don’t like me being here, and honestly, I can’t say I’m a big fan of having all my shit taken off the shelves and chucked around – ” The ghost’s expression is getting more and more closed-off by the second, and Hawke can’t even begin to make a guess at what he’s thinking, but he decides to play safe and steer away from active criticism. “Anyway,” he says, shifting slightly on the sofa. “That’s...why I’m here. And that’s why you’re just going to have to put up with me for a bit longer, because I probably want to be in this flat even less than you want me to be in it, and there’s nothing either of us can do to change that. So. Be friends?”

The ghost greets this eloquently phrased proposal with an expression that isn’t exactly disapproval, but doesn’t speak much for their future prospects as _besties_ either. Hawke waits patiently, wondering if it would be bad manners to go and make himself a sandwich. It’s been a long day.

The ghost clears his throat. “You’re...earning money.”

A very long day. Getting longer by the minute. “Sorry?”

“You’re earning money,” he repeats. “Enough to allow you to move out, in time?”

It’s a reasonable enough question, Hawke supposes, but he can’t help feeling a bit hurt by it. Is he really that bad of a flatmate? All right, so he’s not the tidiest person on God's good earth, and maybe his music taste isn’t for everyone, but he's not a murderer and he doesn’t leave socks all over the floor and he doesn't smell. Not of anything unpleasant, anyway. “At some point, yeah. I’d hope so.”

The ghost eyes him for another long moment, then abruptly turns his head, letting his hair hide his expression. His words are measured, almost hesitant. “Well. If that is the case, I...suppose you can stay. For now.”

“Oh, God, _thank_ you,” Hawke says in completely genuine relief. “Thank you, I really appreciate it. Really! Do you have a – what should I call you?”

There’s a pause, longer than Hawke had expected in response to what is, really, a pretty simple question. Hawke heaves a deep inward sigh. He hadn’t expected his resident spirit to be a social butterfly, exactly, but talking to him is a bit like making an international phone call in the nineties and waiting for the other person’s voice to bounce off the satellite. “Fenris,” he says, eventually. “You can call me Fenris. It’s as good as anything else.” The last phrase is spoken almost under his breath, as if Hawke isn’t meant to hear it.

Hawke tries for a bright, conciliatory, ‘nice to meet you!’ grin. It doesn’t work. “Fenris. Cool. Er, my name’s – ”

“I know who you are,” says Fenris, not unkindly. “I was in the room when your friends were referring to you. The blonde one needs to find himself some better manners.”

The blonde one. Could be Varric, or – “You mean Anders?”

“Yes. Him.”

“Ah, he’s just got a lot of opinions about a lot of things. He’s fine when you warm up to him. Hey, can I tell my friends that – ”

“No,” says Fenris, in a very final sort of way.

Hawke wilts, disappointed. “But they’re bound to ask about you.”

 “I didn’t realise I was such a fascinating topic of discussion,” says Fenris.

Jesus Christ, Hawke thinks privately, if this kid got any drier he’d be the fucking Atacama Desert. He attempts another smile. “Well, you did sort of make yourself known to us. Loudly, repeatedly. Quite violently. Was because of the singing? Oh, God, please tell me you didn't hear me singing in the shower - ”

"It was because I wanted you to _leave,”_ Fenris snaps, turning away sharply, and as if in response the door slams shut so hard that the frame actually rattles. Hawke flinches. The tension that’s been slowly departing from his limbs and spine suddenly returns tenfold, forcing a compulsive shudder out of him. Fenris has his back to Hawke now, hands fisted by his sides. He doesn’t look like he’s about to fling anything heavy or blow out any lightbulbs, though, so Hawke risks another question.

“Do you still want me to leave?” he asks, fighting the urge to just cut and run for it. “Or is it...all right? Now that we’ve talked, I mean?”

Fenris doesn’t turn to face him, but his hands unclench from their white-knuckle grip. The muscles in his shoulders tense, almost imperceptibly. “I suppose you're here now,” he says. "There seems little point in trying to get rid of you." Then, seemingly as an afterthought: "And in answer to your question, yes, I did hear. I would advise you not to give up your day job."

It’s hard to describe what happens after that. The tattoos are the first thing to go – at first Hawke thinks that they’re glowing, but then he realises it’s just the light showing through them as they turn transparent. He can see the shape of them through the black T-shirt as they vanish; it’s an unexpectedly complex design, like the veins on a leaf, and he’s just trying to work out where it starts when the skin around it – and the clothes – begin to fade as well. What’s left is not much more than a blurry outline, a desert haze in the rough shape of a person. And then there’s nothing at all, and Hawke is alone in the room.

For a few minutes he just sits there, staring blankly at the hairline crack opening up next to the doorknob, and wondering how much it’ll cost him to get it fixed. And then he gets up, and goes into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich with Red Leicester cheese, and eats it while watching a dark and incomprehensible detective show on ITV. It's all part of the healing process, really.  _Don't give up the day job?_ he thinks at one point, with a kind of hysterical indignation. _Who does he think he is, Simon bloody Cowell?_ Jesus. If he'd wanted a condescending arsehole for a flatmate he'd have moved in with Sebastian. Onscreen, the detective paces up and down in front of a line-up, the room around him grey and featureless. Hawke can't tell which one is meant to be the criminal. All their faces look the same. 

The night draws on, and the flat is silent. In the corridor outside, something pale moves, flickers, and is gone. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back! sorry for the wait - exams have been beating the crap out of me for the last few weeks, so i haven't had much time to sit down and write. i hope you enjoy this chapter; please do let me know what you think!

Their first real altercation kicks off two weeks later.

In hindsight, Hawke thinks, he really should have seen it coming. Fenris had been in a black mood all day. He hadn’t said anything, mainly because Hawke’s not even seen him since that first face-off in the kitchen on Sunday night. That’s not to say he isn’t _there_ , of course. He seems to have learned to respect Hawke’s privacy – the bedroom is mostly free of spiritual activity, and nothing ever goes awry when he’s in the shower or trying to concentrate on a book – but there’s an indefinable sense of presence, and of being watched. He’s never understood the phrase “hairs standing up on the back of your neck”. Now, though, he reckons he’s starting to get it. Some evenings he’ll be standing in the kitchen waiting for some pasta to finish cooking, or aimlessly flicking through channels on the TV, and quite suddenly he’ll feel it. A funny sort of prickling on the back of his neck and the top of his spine, like static electricity, and a coldness in his hands and feet. Other times, he’ll be woken up at half-three by the sound of a door quietly closing, or a clatter in the kitchen, as though someone is moving things around. No voices, though – and no sightings, not even a glimpse. Fenris (if that’s even his real name, which Hawke doubts) seems to be determinedly avoiding him.

It’s not frightening, exactly, but it’s odd. Unsettling. At least now he knows what the disturbances are, and what – or rather _who –_ is causing them. There’s an uneasy truce in place. A kind of “don’t touch my stuff and I won’t touch yours”. Nevertheless, Hawke sometimes thinks he’d prefer it if Fenris was visible, at least once in a while. After all, if something is nowhere, it could be anywhere. Which isn’t a particularly comfortable thought.

Despite his lack of visible presence, Fenris’ moods are palpable. When he’s worked up, the feeling soaks into everything, pervading the atmosphere like a bad smell. Hawke finds himself getting irritated over the stupidest things – a stubbed toe, a broken mug, a window that won’t shut properly – until he realises that it’s not his own anger that he’s experiencing, but someone else’s. It’s a bit like sitting on a wet bench and feeling the dampness creep insidiously through his trousers. 

The others, unsurprisingly, find this creepy. It _is_ creepy. It’s not as though they’re sharing emotions (as he attempts to explain to Merrill, without much success); he can quite easily distinguish his own feelings from Fenris’, now that he knows what’s happening. It’s more of an empathy thing, really. If pressed, he’d say they can sense one another’s energy – although that all sounds a bit New-Agey and weird, so perhaps he wouldn’t.  

They’d discussed it after Hawke's shift, during something that started as a revision session and became a game of “Never Have I Ever” that predictably resulted in Isabela finishing almost an entire bottle of single-malt whisky and going to sleep under the desk. Prior to this, Merrill had drawn thoughtfully on her joint and ventured, “It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. For either of you. Perhaps we should throw a party, to try and cheer him up?”

Hawke had stared at her, too appalled to be tactful. “Merrill, that’s a _terrible_ idea.”

“It’s just a thought,” she said defensively. “Parties always cheer me up.” She passed the joint to Isabela, who had been eyeing it hopefully for the past couple of minutes, and frowned down at her hands as though they’d just said something rude to her.

“What’s he so pissed about, anyway?” Varric wondered. “He’s got a cushy house, free Internet access, a gorgeous flatmate – ”

“Aw, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” said Varric generously. “Anyway, as I was saying – he’s pretty well off, for a ghost. Most of them get stuck in crappy old hotels or abandoned castles, not council flats. You’d think he’d be a bit more appreciative, you know?”

“He is dead,” Hawke reminded him. “Real estate probably isn’t the first thing on his mind.”

“How did he die, anyway?” Isabela asked keenly.

“Ah. I…haven’t actually asked.”

There was a chorus of disappointed noises. “You _haven’t?”_ Isabela gasped. “Why on earth _not?_ That’d be the first thing I’d ask, if I had a ghost!”

 “It’s not exactly the sort of thing you bring up in casual conversation!” Hawke said defensively. “It’s not like I can just go, oh hello Fenris, how’s it going, by the way would you mind telling me all about how you got murdered and ended up haunting my rubbish flat? He hates me enough as it is.”

“What do you mean, murdered?” Anders said.

Hawke faltered. What _had_ he meant? He knew next to nothing about Fenris, after all – there was nothing to indicate that he had died of anything other than natural causes. “Murdered, killed, expired, whatever,” he said, in an attempt to cover up the slip. “It just seems like a touchy subject, you know? Sort of a third-date question.”

“He’d probably murder _you_ if he heard you say that,” Anders warned him. “Here’s an idea: why don’t you save the dating for people who don’t treat you with unchecked loathing?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Isabela said, and shotted back another capful of whisky, even though Hawke was fairly sure it wasn’t her turn. “Unchecked loathing is how most of my relationships start out.”

“Which reminds me.” Anders reached over, snagged the joint from her hand, and inhaled generously, grinning at Isabela through the smoke. “Never have I ever…hate-fucked somebody in the true crime section of a public library.”

Looking suitably chastened, Isabela drank.

After pouring her into Merrill’s bed (“It's like a sleepover! Except with…more vomit”) and going their separate ways, Hawke had taken the bus back to his flat and entered to an atmosphere of what could only be described as boiling hatred. _Excellent,_ he thought, and set about making himself a cup of tea – only to discover that the bottle of milk in the fridge had turned rancid and smelt like an unwashed foot. Coughing slightly, he upended it into the sink and retired to bed. Which is where he currently finds himself, sprawled out on top of the covers like a dead jellyfish and glaring up at the ceiling, wondering why it hasn’t yet spontaneously combusted into a blackened mess.

He’s further away from sleep than ever, and it’s not just the heat and the closeness of the air, or the distant rumble of passing cars drifting in through the open window. It’s the atmosphere – tense and vicious, with a barely contained undercurrent of violence. The money worries aren’t helping. It’s the end of the month, which normally means payday, but the manager of the record shop – notorious for his casual attitude to wages – has decided to delay it for another week. Which is fine; really, it is. He’ll just have to improvise. Use up some of the tinned food, make his own sandwiches for work instead of buying them, that sort of thing. He’ll be fine.

Giving up on sleep for the night, Hawke rises and lurches towards the door, knuckling his sore eyes. Coffee, that’s what he needs. He opens the fridge, stares stupidly at where the milk should be for a moment, then curses. Of course. Of fucking course.

Well, it needn’t be the end of the world. There’s an all-night store on the corner of the street, and if he finds a long enough coat he _probably_ doesn’t need to change out of his pyjamas, and besides he’s made enough late-night shopping trips that the owner is no longer fazed by his bleary, thousand-yard, caffeine-deprived stare. As he’s scraping together the requisite loose change, the shelf (badly attached, he screwed it into the wall himself) rattles as though someone’s hit it. A plate slides off the precariously stacked pile and falls to the floor. Miraculously, it doesn’t break, just wobbles around on its edge for a moment before losing its momentum and keeling over with a resounding crash.

“Stop that,” says Hawke. As if in response, another plate falls from the shelf and smashes into pieces.

Sighing, Hawke finds a Post-It and scribbles a quick note on it: FENRIS: GONE OUT 4 MILK. ALSO PLEASE DON’T BREAK ANY MORE OF MY STUFF. NOT COOL. There. Now it’s in writing; that’s basically a contract, isn’t it? He sticks it to the fridge, feeling a bit pleased with his own resourcefulness, and goes downstairs.

When he comes back, milk in hand, the kitchen is trashed.

Hawke stands in the doorway and stares at it. His legs are oddly numb, and when he moves them they don’t feel as though they belong to him. Every step forward makes a nasty crunching sound, and he thinks vaguely that it’s lucky he forgot to take his shoes off at the door.

All the cupboards are open, one of the doors hanging off its hinges, and the floor is a chaos of smashed crockery and glass, tea towels, and cutlery (some of it bent at interesting angles that make him wonder vaguely just how _strong_ Fenris is when he’s really trying). A bag of sugar has been upended and scattered over the mess, as well as half a bottle of brown sauce.

This, Hawke thinks, is the last straw. This is  _it._

“Fine!” he yells at the empty room. “You’ve made your fucking point!”

He kicks the cupboard, and swears as agony flares up in his big toe. It’s hard to maintain a sense of righteous anger while hopping desperately on one foot, but he does his best. “I thought talking about this might sort it out, but clearly not,” he growls. Is Fenris even listening? Usually he can tell, but perhaps the sheer intensity of his own rage is disturbing the psychic vibrations. It’s the _audacity_ of it that gets him. After the note he left – which was, after all, reasonably polite and within the bounds of human decency – it’s hard to take an event like this as anything other than a direct “fuck you”. He grits his teeth, and tries again. “Look, if you’re listening: I’m sick of this. If you want to throw shit around and make a mess, then go somewhere else. Nobody’s forcing you to stay here, are they? Well? Are they?”

There’s a slight cough from behind him.

Hawke doesn’t even bother to look. “What,” he says flatly, “do you want.”

A pause; then, very quietly, “I wish to apologise.”

It’s so unexpected that Hawke has to turn round after all, just to check that he hasn’t gone mad and started hallucinating. But no, Fenris seems sincere – if not exactly _contrite._ He’s partially faded, shimmering around the edges like a mirage, but what Hawke can see of his face looks tense and awkward.

“Today was…not good,” he says, the words halting, as though someone is dragging them slowly out of him with a hook. “Things spiralled. I lost control. It will not happen again.”

Hawke isn’t mollified. “Really? You lost control in the direction of my kitchen, immediately after I left you a note _specifically_ asking you not to _fucking do that?_ You thought – ”

“I can’t read.”

The wind goes out of Hawke’s sails. Not completely, he’s too worked up to calm down all at once, but enough for him to stop and falter. “You can’t?”

Fenris shakes his head.

“Oh. Well.”

“My memories of whatever life I had before are – few,” Fenris says. He looks visibly uncomfortable, but seems to feel that Hawke deserves an explanation. “There are gaps. Blank spaces where something should be and now is not. Perhaps I used to know how, but that knowledge is gone from me.” His hands twitch restlessly at his sides.

Hawke stares, trying to figure out how to respond to that. There’s a sense of being on a knife’s edge; this is the first time Fenris has even come close to opening up to him, and he knows that if he fucks it up even the slightest bit, says one thing wrong, then the phenomenon will likely never be repeated. Fenris doesn’t seem like he’d respond well to pity. Tasteless jokes are probably out, too, which is a shame; any situation that can’t be dealt with via humour is not typically a situation that Hawke wants to be involved in.

There’s only one question he can think of, and the response could go either way. It might break the uncomfortable truce that divides them like a two-way mirror, leaving them aware of one another but unable to make any sort of meaningful contact – or it could sever their already tenuous connection as though it had never been. Hawke wishes he had a coin to flip. Sensitivity and decision-making: the two things in which he lacks any kind of God-given talent.

When he looks up, Fenris is even more transparent than usual, clearly eager to remove himself from the situation. It’s now or never. Hawke takes a breath in, steels himself, and goes for it: “Do you remember how you died?”

There’s a pause. Hawke takes a little solace in the fact that Fenris isn’t coming at him with a meat cleaver (yet); he looks more pensive than anything else. Finally he sighs, and solidifies enough to lean against the counter, staring up in the general direction of the ceiling. His next words are soft, almost as if he’s speaking to himself. “I’m not sure. There are…flashes. But I do not think it was peaceful.”

“What makes you say that?”

Fenris won’t look at him. One hand is still twitching; Hawke is coming to recognise that as a frustrated tic, a sign of Fenris trying to remember or articulate something that is little more than a blur of fractured images. “I remember being angry,” he says. “And afraid. If I concentrate, I can remember. Not all of it, of course, only bits and pieces, but – ” He breaks off sharply.

“But?” Hawke prompts.

Fenris’s outline flickers, just a little. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean I can’t.” The flickering is intensifying, coming and going like static on a badly-tuned television. The overhead light buzzes. There’s a sort of crackling tension in the air, like the way the air feels before a lightning storm hits; Hawke feels it prickle up his arms, making the hairs there stand on end. “There’s too much. It’s too much, I just – I can’t – ”

“All right,” Hawke says, keeping his voice low, as though he's trying to calm a spooked horse. “I’m sorry.”

With a visible effort, Fenris manages to get the flickering under control, although the static in the air remains. He sinks back against the counter, head down, hair covering his eyes. He looks even more exhausted than Hawke feels. “No. I am the one who should be sorry. This outburst was…unworthy of me. And your curiosity is not unfounded. I only wish I could assuage it.”

Hawke says, “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have pushed, anyway.”

But it’s no good; the walls are back up. Fenris shakes his head. “It’s fine. You should try to get some rest.”

“Pretty sure that’s not going to happen,” Hawke says. “But thanks for the thought. No more Hulking out on me, okay?” 

He’s sure he catches the smallest flicker of a smile before Fenris blurs again and vanishes, leaving behind a lingering smell of ozone and a lot of cracked china. Which is when Hawke realises that for all his apologies, Fenris has still left him to clean up the mess in the kitchen.

“Fuck you, dude,” he says, as quietly as he possibly can, and pulls a pair of Marigold gloves from under the sink.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so!!! after god knows how many months, i return with a new chapter. exciting news eh
> 
> i'm afraid not much happens in this one, but hold on tight - there's more coming. (i hope.)
> 
> happy reading!

The library opens at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. Hawke’s there five minutes before that, just in time to see the metal grille crank upwards and the lights flicker on. He wants peace and quiet if he’s going to do this properly, and if that means stumbling out of bed in the half-light with eyes bleary from lack of sleep, then so be it.

“Do you,” he says to the librarian, uncertain of how to even go about the task ahead of him, “do you have – I mean, is there a records section?”

“Top floor, first door on the left,” she says, and smiles at him. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Housing records,” Hawke says. “Ideally recent ones.” Fenris’s style of speech may be a little antiquated, but he's pretty clearly from the twentieth century. If he knew a little more about fashion, he might be able to figure it out from the clothes (T-shirt, dark trousers, battered-looking Converse trainers) – but as it is, he’s limited to a time-frame somewhere between 1920 and...well, now.

The librarian fiddles with some papers. “Have you tried the Internet?”

Hawke nods. He’s found a few pages on estate agent websites, but nothing about any former owners. Before the building was converted into a fish-and-chip shop, it had been a simple two-floor house, and had stood empty for years. Damp problems, Hawke supposed. He asked Mr. Ling if he’d had any other tenants after the conversion, but as he’d expected, the answer was no. Before Hawke arrived, Mr. Ling had explained, it was simply used for storage.

“You mean no one lived there?” Hawke had double-checked. “Seriously? No one at all?”

“There were squatters,” Mr. Ling said, shrugging. “They were evicted when the developers moved in. Before that, I don’t know.”

Hawke had thanked him for his help, then retreated upstairs to brood. Had Fenris been a squatter? He didn’t look like one. Then again, it didn’t do to judge people on appearances.

“I couldn’t find anything,” he says to the librarian now. “It’s not an old house. 1930s, I think, but there are no records of previous owners. Not before 1990.”

“Well, you’re certainly welcome to have a look,” she says, and takes out a pen, scribbling something on a notepad. “Although I have to warn you that if you want to take it out, we’ll need to take down your details for legal reasons. Don’t worry – it’s all confidential.” Hawke nods, acquiescing. She gives him the piece of paper, marked with the Dewey decimal number of the shelf he needs, and he slips it into his pocket and takes the lift to the top floor.

Predictably enough, it’s deserted. The drone of air humidifiers hums, just below the surface level of his hearing. Behind each door, Hawke knows, will be rows and rows of filing cabinets, filled with envelopes and folders that no one has bothered to look at in years. Windows along the far wall overlook the city, its farthest reaches turned pale and misty as watered-down milk.

He begins in the local archives. It’s a labour of love, far more convoluted and technical than he ever could have expected. He knows what he’s looking for – census records, title deeds, estate papers, that kind of thing – but it turns out sorting through endless, unspeakably dull folders of data makes it difficult to figure out what’s relevant information and what isn’t. After a time, though, he starts to get into the rhythm of it. Slide open a drawer. Pull out a folder. Flip to the index, scan it, turn to the relevant section. Skim-read it, take in the utter lack of useful data, swear quietly, replace the folder. And repeat.

“Doesn’t this seem just a little bit stalkerish to you?” says Anders, when he finally shows up at 2pm clutching two coffee cups and a laptop.

“How is it stalkerish? We literally live together. We’re _flatmates.”_

“Not by choice,” Anders points out. “Also, why am I the one being enlisted to help with this? I’ve got a life, you know. A schedule. Things to do, people to see.”

“Well, aren’t you lucky,” says Hawke. “Come on, Anders. You do history, don’t you? Research must make up at least fifty per cent of your nerdy little life.” He takes the other coffee, swigs it, sputters in disgust. “Oh my God, is this fucking _soy milk?”_

“I study politics, not history,” says Anders, electing to ignore the question, “and insulting me isn’t going to make me any more eager to help you.” But he gets the laptop out anyway, balancing his coffee precariously between his knees. “So. What are you going to do if you find the guy?”

Hawke frowns at him. “What guy?”

“You know! The guy who supposedly used to live at your place, the one who might know what happened to your resident cranky poltergeist. How are you gonna find him? This isn’t a spy movie. You can’t just hire an investigations team to track him down.”

“I don’t need to,” Hawke says. “I know people.” That sounds threatening. He revises it. “Well, person. Singular person. The point is, I know who to ask, and I will find him.”

“All right, Liam Neeson,” Anders says, “take it easy.” He takes a sip from his cup and rolls it around his mouth. Hawke’s fairly sure that he also hates soy milk and only pretends to enjoy it to make everyone else feel bad, but that’s another topic for another time. “Right. OK. We’re good to go. Remind me of the address?”

Hawke tells him. Soon enough there’s silence between them, save for the rustling of papers or the tapping of keys. “Try this name,” Hawke will say every so often – but nothing. Or: “What about this website?” Nothing. “Maybe spell it with an extra E?” Nothing, nothing, nothing.

“This is unbelievably pointless,” Anders says at half-past five, and he closes his laptop.

“No, it’s not! Come on. We’re nearly done.”

“You’ve been saying that for the past two hours.”

“I mean it. Look, there’s only two folders left in this cabinet, and they’re both post-1935. Which is exactly what we’re looking for, right?”

Anders is already packing his laptop back into its case. “Sorry. I want to help, Hawke, honestly I do.” Then he reconsiders. “Well – no, actually I don’t, but a friend in need is a friend indeed, blah blah, et cetera. Unfortunately, I’ve got a prior appointment.”

“Oh, really? Where are you rushing off to?” Hawke asks, curious in spite of himself.

“I’ve got a date,” says Anders, with frankly repulsive smugness.

“You? _You’ve_ got a date?” Hawke feigns shock, one maidenly hand fluttering to his chest. “And there was I thinking you were going to die a spinster. Who’s the lucky lad? And are his sideburns more or less disastrous than the last one?”

“His name’s Karl, and he has a beard.” Anders shoulders open the door, laptop case slung over one shoulder. “It’s very beautiful and luscious. I’ll show you a picture sometime.”

Hawke winks at him. “Bet it’s not as nice as mine.”

“I’ve seen goats with beards nicer than yours,” says Anders, and closes the door on Hawke’s noise of outrage.

The records room is oddly lonely without Anders’ discontented muttering in the background. Hawke almost finds himself missing it. Not that he’d ever admit that to anyone, of course. The penultimate folder proves useless, and he replaces it with a sigh and opens the last one, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. _Please. Please let this be the right one._ It’s dog-eared and yellowed, and several of the pages have pale patches where photographs were once clipped in. He turns to the back, searching the index for the correct postcode.

“Bingo,” he says to himself quietly. His voice sounds weird, scratchy and too loud for the silent room. He flips back towards the appropriate file, skimming across the obscenely small text. His heart sinks. Perhaps it was too much to hope for. Not only is there no relevant information, but his postcode isn’t even _there._

Except – wait. Hawke frowns down at the file. Its pages aren’t numbered, but as he scans down the list of postcodes (and corresponding tenants), he can’t help noticing that they skip straight from one district to another. A whole letter of the alphabet, missing.

Reaching out, he runs a cautious fingernail down between the two pages. It catches, tiny shreds of paper still clinging to the spine, almost as if...

…almost as if a page has been ripped out. 

Hawke picks the folder up, heart suddenly beating a little too quickly. He’s being ridiculous, he tells himself, as the lift rattles downwards, lights flickering dangerously. It could perfectly well have been an accident, or a coincidence. People damage library books all the time. In all probability someone tore it out for a history project, or as a memento to stick into a scrapbook. That’s the most likely explanation.

Deep in his gut, though, he knows that it’s not the right one. He can’t explain why, even to himself, but something about that missing page just feels _off._ Hawke has never been a big fan of intuition – all that stuff is a bit too New-Agey and hippy-dippy for him to get behind – but ever since he started sharing his flat with the ghost of a possibly-murdered teenager (although come to think of it he’s not entirely sure _how_ old Fenris is), he’s become a hell of a lot more open-minded.

“I have a question,” he says to the librarian, balancing his coffee cup in the crook of his elbow. She’s a different one from before – older, sterner-looking, with half-moon glasses and hair dyed an intimidating shade of red.

“What is it?” she says, looking at him over her computer screen with undue levels of suspicion.

Hawke proffers the folder. “I’m doing a, a research project” – it’s close enough to the truth that he doesn’t feel guilty – “and the page I was looking for has been torn out. Can you find the name of the last person who borrowed it?”

“All information pertaining to past customers is strictly confidential,” says the librarian.

“I know, I know, but – ” He sneaks a look at her name badge. “Listen, Maria, I really need this page. Are you sure there’s no way I can find a copy?” Her frosty expression suggests that his use of a first name wasn’t the wisest choice. He puts on his most charming expression, complete with puppy-dog eyes. “Please. It’s really important.”

“I’m sorry about the missing page,” says Maria, sounding anything but. “Unfortunately, I can’t help you. The best we can do is find the last borrower on our system and try and get hold of them directly. However,” she adds, seeing Hawke’s hopeful expression, “I do have to warn you that if their contact details have changed at any point since they last took the file out, then there’s nothing we can do.”

“You can’t even give me a name?”

“As I’ve already explained, our protocol – ”

“This person vandalised your book,” Hawke says. His temper is rising, and he fights it down, keeping his voice even. “They stole private information, removed something potentially sensitive that has no digital backup whatsoever, and you’re just going to let that slide? Seriously?”

Maria stares at him, then breathes out a frustrated sigh. “Give me the file.”

Hawke hands it over. An idea is starting to formulate, somewhere in the back of his brain, where all the best ideas start. He leans against the counter, one elbow against Maria’s in-tray.

She types rapidly, eyes scanning up and down the screen. “Well, I’ve got a name here,” she says, “and a check-out date, April 2005. But there’s no guarantee that – ”

The in-tray falls with a clatter and Hawke stumbles sideways, only just catching himself in time. The coffee goes flying, spraying its contents (soy milk, and good riddance to it) all over the trolley of newly returned library books. “Oh, my God,” Hawke says fervently to Maria, who is frozen with horror. “I’m so sorry. Really, really sorry. I just tripped. Please, let me help – ” and he starts scrubbing the books with his sleeve. It has the predictable effect of making the brown liquid spread even further, dripping off the edge of the trolley and spattering on to the polished wooden floor.

“Stop!” Maria says, ducking under the edge of the counter and producing a pack of tissues from her pocket. “I’ll do it.”

She turns towards the trolley, and Hawke takes advantage of the momentary distraction to lean over the counter and stare at the computer screen, breathing a quiet sigh of relief when he sees that the display is still there, still visible. There’s a box of tissues under the counter, and he seizes them before focusing on the screen, pulse hammering in his ears. For a moment adrenaline turns the whole thing blurry. Then he focuses and makes out the relevant entry: 24 April, 2005. And below that, a name.

Bingo, indeed.

“What are you doing?” Maria says sharply from behind him.

“Just grabbing some more tissues,” Hawke says, turning hastily round and showing her the box in his hand. “Need any help?”

“No, thank you,” Maria says. Her voice is several degrees below liquid nitrogen. “Are you taking that folder out?”

Hawke shakes his head.

“Well. Goodbye, then,” says Maria, and turns back to continue scrubbing.

As dismissals go, it’s not the politest one he’s ever received – but Hawke leaves the library with a grin on his face, fighting the urge to break into an impromptu victory dance. As he turns the corner, heading towards the bus stop, he scrolls through his phone contacts until he finds the right one.

“Hello?” says a voice on the other end, after only two rings. If Hawke didn’t know it as well as he does, he’d think it sounded brusque – even grumpy. Fortunately, he knows better than that. He ought to, after seven years of on-and-off correspondence.

“Aveline! Hi,” he says, and shifts the phone to his other hand as the bus lurches around the corner ahead of him, pulling in to the side of the road. “Listen. About that favour…”


End file.
